Mar 21, 2024 - Sale 2663

Sale 2663 - Lot 362

Price Realized: $ 585
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(PRISON.) R.M. Johnson. The State Convict Road Force and the State Press: Paragraphs and Photographs. 30, [2] pages, including 17 photographs. Original printed wrappers, 5¼ x 6¾ inches; minimal wear, faint dampstaining. Richmond, VA: Richmond Press, January 1907
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Issued during the era of unapologetic chain-gang prison labor, this pamphlet boasts of the fine work being done on Virginia's roads by virtually enslaved prison laborers. It includes a poem celebrating road work life (almost certainly not penned by a convict), and a boast that the road work was serving as a deterrent to crime on page 25: "There have been at least two thousand loafers driven to work by the fear of being sent out to fracture stone on the Jamestown Boulevard. These estimates are made by men who employ numbers of negroes. Formerly labor was hard to get, especially at this time of year. Now the negroes are hunting for it." The photographs show work camps and crews in addition to "before and after" shots of improved roads. 2 in OCLC (Library of Virginia and University of Virginia), and none traced at auction.

With--small snapshot photo of an unidentified prison work gang of this same era, 2¾ x 4½ inches.